The Golden Dragons
by Arhu
Summary: When her father was killed, the only thing on Sakura's mind was vengence. In a new neighborhood and new school, and with the help of a few new friends, Sakura hopes to fulfill her plans against the Golden Dragons... [Starting anew, sorta. No pairings yet]
1. Chapter 1

Today was not fit for a funeral. It was much too bright, too happy. It was as if the day were out to mock his death, implying that his life wasn't important enough for the stereotypical dreary darkness, accompanied with a downpour.

I realized the irony of the weather as I stared down at his coffin, my just barely sixteen year old body nearly as dead as the man before me. As soon as it hit me, I broke into a fit of laughter. My giggling only added to the irony of the day and be-gifted myself with the stares of disgust and confusion from the others at the funeral. My mother gathered up her sobbing self from the edge of the company and took her and me from the scene, explaining as she went that we both had had a rough day and desperately needed time to think.

It didn't take us long to reach the line of vehicles parked along the length of pavement beside the graves within the walls of Konoha's lone cemetery. Going up to the beaten, gray Toyota Corolla that my mother never drove, I was hit with the question that had been plaguing both her and my minds. "What the hell is _wrong_ with you?" she demanded, her voice sounding strained from the tears.

The pebbles and sand by my feet took up my interest as I answered, "The weather is beautiful."

A cough. "…What?"

"The weather. It's gorgeous," came my reply, earning another cough from my mother. "It's perfect weather for a funeral, don't you think, Ma?"

She snapped. Not into a fit of screams and yells and absurd _questions_, like I wished she had. Hissy fits I could handle. No. The wall holding all her tears came crashing down around her and the only one she could turn to was me. She snatched my black coat with loose hands and fell to her knees before me.

I glanced around to see if there was someone—_anyone_—that could do my mother more good than me. No one. _Dammit._ My gaze slipped down to her blotchy red face, snot and tears mingling to meet on my useless jacket. I took her shaky hands into my own and detached them from my jacket. Kneeling so her face was level with mine, I whispered, "Ma…maybe we should go home." The look on her aging face didn't change. "We could close all the drapes, put one of his favorite records on, and eat ice cream and bonbons 'till the sun goes down." A weak smile. I took it as a yes. Helping her to her feet and shedding my snot-infested coat, we got in the Toyota and left the cemetery with the radio blasting and Ma and I singing the last of the day's tears out.

That day, as I sat staring out the window and mumbling the parts of "Somebody to Love" that I didn't know with my mother, I decided that I hated sunny days.


	2. Chapter 2

It was a week after his funeral and two days after Ma decided to move. She came to the decision after a cop showed up on our front step and told us that it was murder. A local gang locked him in a room after slicing his skin to shreds and left him there to either bleed or die from dehydration. This was during the week he was supposed to be on a business trip, confirming a deal and making nice-nice with the newly made business partners, so Ma and I thought nothing of his absence. But after he didn't come home when he said he would, after all the unanswered calls my mother sent him, we finally called the police. It took four days to find his corpse.

Apparently, it was neither blood loss nor dehydration that killed him. An infection, a small one easily taken care of with peroxide and Band-Aids, run rampant from the lack of treatment and filth about the room. The infection had spread like wild fire from its origin, on his hands, and slowly ate away at his immune system, wearing it down to nothing.

Horrified, Ma had simply nodded to the officer and, after he'd left, spun around and told me to start packing. When I asked why, she answered in a ghostly voice, "If they killed your father," I flinched; it was hard to give him a title so soon after his death, "so easily, they could come after us and do much worse things. We're moving so at least _I_ feel a bit safer." I didn't argue with her words.

The next day, the cops called to give us more information on his case. The Golden Dragons; the gang that had killed my father was referred to as the Golden Dragons. According to the cops and their spies in the rivaling gangs, they weren't that popular or very high on the totem poll around the city. His death wasn't entirely deliberate, but nor was it an accident. The business he had gone away to set the deal with was apparently on the Dragons' "Hit List". They found it as their civil duty to kill off any possible associates, my father included.

Just before noon, Ma and I were on our way to a different part of the city. The slums, in truth, because the cops had an idea on how to insure our safety. We had to get on good terms with the surrounding people, and, as a result, get closer to the gangs that held a low opinion of the Golden Dragons. With my mother and I on the "Good List" of the Dragons' rival gangs, the cops figured that if something happened to us, the gangs on our side would go after the Dragons. It would end with a gang war, which the police weren't in total agreement with, obviously, but it would set the Dragons in their rightful place: at the bottom of the food chain, occasionally getting kicked around like a beaten dog.

Moving to the slums, on the other side of the city, Ma had to find a new job. She did, fairly quickly, too. She was going to be working at the nearby mental hospital as an orderly. She'd already told me that I was to go there after school instead of going home. Ma said it was because she didn't want anyone breaking in and stealing me away. What she _meant_ was that she didn't want people breaking in and killing off the only close person she had left. I agreed easily enough; the extra time at the hospital would give me a chance to finish my schoolwork without too much of a distraction.

I also figured I'd have time to come up with ways to end the Golden Dragons in a rather "big bang" sort of way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Please keep in mind** that this is and will _not_ be the same as the original fanfic, _Institutionalized_. This is a rewrite of the same story and has very little to do with the institution Sakura's mother works at. I'm sorry for dissappointment this may cause.

* * *

Coffee. All I wanted was a hot cup of swirling brown liquid to wake myself up, but I couldn't just go out and get one. I had places to be and stalling just long enough to quench my thirst would only make the walk seem more daunting than it was. With an unsatisfied huff, I continued walking to my new school, Kashi High School.

I wasn't at all thrilled to be entering a new school—it usually meant that I'd be picked on for at least a month and I wouldn't have any friends until well into the second quarter of the year. The situation was only made worse by my transferring during the middle of my junior year; teachers hated trying to re-teach everything for some annoying transfer student.

I reached the school fairly early, my mind and body still craving some wonderfully caffeinated liquid. Kashi High school was huge, to say the least. The building was all brick, just as I would've expected for a city school, and all along one side of the school were vines that prettily covered and circled the windows on that side. The building's front wasn't much to look at; it had the standard large double doors, steps leading up to them, and a ramp that zigzagged once before ending next to the cement stairs.

There were a lot of students hanging around outside of the school and all of them had a uniform on. Wearing only a plain, dark blue T-shirt and a pair of somewhat faded jeans, the other girls' clothes, consisting of a white dress shirt, a mid-thigh length red jacket, and a long red skirt, easily made me realize my mistake in not scoping out the school before attending. With an agitated sigh, I entered the school and found the principal's office as quickly as I possibly could.

The office was actually quite comforting, even with the usual overwhelming air of authority permeating around the room. The secretary was particularly friendly, saying as I walked in, "Hello, I'm Shizune. Ms. Takeshi has another student with her right now, but she'll be done in a moment. If I could just have your name?" With my mumbled name put to memory, the woman gently pushed her short black hair away from her face before turning back to her computer screen.

I sat myself in one of the somewhat uncomfortable chairs the office provided, my empty book bag placed lightly in my lap. "Kashi High is one of the best schools in the city, you know," I heard Shizune say. I looked up, but she kept her dark eyes on the work before her. "It's one of only two schools that has boarding for students," she continued, "and definitely the cheaper of the two. Sometimes, depending on a student's situation, the boarding fee doesn't cost anything at all."

Indifferent, I replied with a "really?" to at least show the woman I had good manners. I didn't really know why she was telling me this. I would have gone to Kashi High whether it was the shittiest school or the most expensive—Ma made sure that I could walk the distance between home and school because she couldn't drive me. She also thought I was old enough to not go on the bus anymore.

There was a creak, then, and the inner door leading into Ms. Takeshi's office opened to reveal a glaring blonde boy with eyes the most watery blue I had ever seen. He looked pissed, especially with the three sets of two inch long, lightly discolored scars on each cheek, and his unkempt appearance didn't help to make him look any more innocent. The dark red uniform he wore was a mess: the jacket was splayed open and frayed at the bottom and cuffs and the white button up beneath it was left open a little at the top and untucked from the black pleated trousers. There was no tie anywhere on his person, especially not tightly around the collar of his dress shirt. His shoes were nothing more than a pair of ratty orange Converse that appeared on the verge of falling apart were he to walk to far in them.

At the boy's entrance, Shizune had looked up from her work and gave a mild smirk to the boy's back, as he was staring rather annoyingly at me. "So, Naruto," she began, her voice hardly hiding her amusement, "what's the punishment this time?" The kid's eyes were looking me up and down, taking in the pink hair that I've always hated, my pea green eyes, and my far-too-casual outfit. After ignoring the secretary's query for a moment long enough to save my face to memory, it seemed, Naruto turned back to Shizune, a smirk of his own gracing his scarred face.

"I have detention for the week," he said, his voice cocky despite his predicament. Shizune sent him a look that seemed to say, "That can't be it" and, somewhat sheepishly, he continued, "I have to help the unlucky bastards who were unfortunate enough to have transferred to this school in the middle of the year."

"All of them?" Shizune asked, shock seeping into her kind voice. I began to feel awkward, sitting there, listening to their entire conversation, but I still hadn't gotten the okay to go into Ms. Takeshi's office.

The blonde folded his arms over his chest and replied with some relief in his voice, "Nah, only the kids in my own grade. Which I heard there weren't too many this year." His cerulean eyes swept over to send me a look, holding some feeling I couldn't place behind them. I shifted uncomfortably because it was obvious we _both_ knew that I was a transfer student, only I prayed we weren't both juniors.

The conversation was ended when a motherly voice from inside the principal's office called out, "Shizune! Don't encourage him!" The door had been left open, but all I could see of the room was a shelf that was filled with hard and soft cover books.

With a huff from both him and Shizune, Naruto sat heavily into the next chair over from the one next to me. Shizune turned to me, a pleasant smile covering her kind face, and said, "Ms. Takeshi will see you now, Sakura."

I nodded, stood up, and entered the principal's office. The room's lighting was comfortable; enough to read by but not blinding. There were bookshelves lining all for walls of the room, each filled with medical and otherwise educational books and a few scattered busts of old, dignified looking men. In the middle of the room sat a large oaken desk, a jumble of papers covering the entire right side of it and an ancient looking computer on the other side. On the other side of the desk, staring haughtily at the monitor, was a blonde woman wearing a revealing low-cut white blouse. Actually, I was sure that anything the woman wore would have been revealing—she was unusually large in the chest region.

The woman's amber eyes glanced at me briefly before returning back to the computer. "Take a seat," she waved a hand towards the three chairs placed strategically before the desk. I sat down silently, waiting patiently for her to finish whatever it was she was doing.

It didn't take long and once she was done, she sent a pleasant, maternal grin my way. "Hello and welcome to Kashi High School. I'm Takeshi Tsunade, principal of Kashi High," she eased out, voice letting nothing betray the kind look on her face. "And you are?"

Sticking my right hand out over the messy desk, I replied, my voice a little shaky, "Haruno Sakura. I've just transferred…" I let my words trail off, figuring Ms. Takeshi would know why I was here.

"Ah, yes. Junior, right?" She didn't wait for my reply, but instead began sifting through a pile of papers in front of her. "Here we are," she said after a moment. "From the other side of the city, living with your mother…father, deceased." I twitched at the indifferent tone Ms. Takeshi held as she read off my file. "Good grades all around, excluding Physical Education—can't blame you on that—and Konoha High's book club." She looked up from the file, an appraising look seeping into her tea colored eyes. "You've got quite the record here, Miss Haruno. The teachers will welcome you with open arms." The papers slid from her hands and back onto the desk. "Mr. Uzumaki will show you the way to each of your classes, which, I assure you, will cause a bit of tardiness. You'll have a pass, though, so your teachers shouldn't mind." She scoured the surface of her desk for a moment before producing a flimsy bookmark sized schedule, which she handed to me, saying, "If you lose it, just come back to the main office; Shizune should have an extra copy or two." With one last grin, the principal dismissed me and I reentered the main office.

Shizune was typing away, thoroughly engrossed in her work, and Naruto was slouched in one of the waiting chairs, going to town with picking his nails. I huffed out a soft cough, catching both their attention, and Shizune's smile was back on her face. "All set to go, Sakura?" At my nod, she flung a hand in Naruto's direction and said airily, "So's he. Right, Mr. Uzumaki?" Her grin turned into a smirk when the blonde sent a glare her way.

He stood up, stuck his hand out toward me and took the schedule from my hands. He glanced down at it quickly before he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and waited for me to grab the all day pass Shizune held out. Once it was in my hand, he pulled open the office door and made a rather hasty exit. I followed after silently, my green eyes focused on the floor before me.

I saw Naruto's feet come to a stop at the corner of my vision, but I kept my gaze trained to the white and black speckled linoleum tiles that we were standing on. "Sakura, right?" he asked, clearly not caring if he had gotten the name right or not. I nodded slowly, trying my best to ignore the disgusted tone slipping into his voice. His next words shocked me, though, and my eyes snapped up to send a questioning look his way. "I'm not leading you around the school for the rest of the year, Sakura, so pick up your damn head and pay attention." His sharp blue eyes betrayed his tone so horribly, showing me the concern towards my timid way of walking, that I felt something click between myself and this blonde haired boy standing before me.

Nodding with a bit more acknowledgement in the gesture, I said to him, softly at first, "All right." The look of concern still hadn't left his aqua eyes and I repeated with a stronger voice, "Yeah, okay. Lead the way, Uzumaki."

Amusement flitted across his face and he said, faking scorn, "Only teachers call me that. The name's Naruto, okay? Jeez." Naruto spun around and began walking down the halls once more, tossing over his shoulder playfully, "Maybe people with pink hair are even dumber than blondes." He shook his head a little, his body language portraying something akin to amazement.

Laughter bubbled up through my lips at his light teasing and I hurried my pace to keep up with him. "Are not," I dejectedly mumbled, though loud enough for him to hear and to get a small guffaw out of him. We were mostly silent for the rest of the way to my first class, English, but the silence was hardly uncomfortable and far from intimidating. I was very glad we were both juniors.


End file.
